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On March 10 2013 06:15 Chronopolis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 03:18 Hider wrote:
1. You have to place (some of) your supply depots with caution.
2. You get the time you need to bring back your army to defend small harass.
3. Larger groups of units should be able to deal with the PF before your army is there, unless you have extra defences.
4. Your opponent can now fake harass and bate you to waste minerals.
Is this not what you kinda had in mind anyway?
No I actually had the opposite in mind  Currently planetaries are very good vs small group armies and medium sized armies, but useless vs deathballs. My suggestion wil it revert it so that it is good against medium sized units, awfull against small group units and very good against deathballs. Like lets say it currently takes 6 seconds for a deathball to kill a planetary. That is not enough time for the terrans army to reposition him self to defend the planetary. My suggestion will double the amount of time from 6 to 12 seconds, which will result in deathballs being a lot weaker. On the other hand I belivee there is no such thing as "winning time vs small armies". Like what can a small army actually to do a planetary? It can't kill the command center it self and rihgtly so, instead it should be able to do damage by A) Killing workers or B) Forcing the terran player to spend 75 energy on the planetary ability (which he really doesn't want to do). Either way the toss's harass will be succesful. In Starbow/WOL/HOTS harassing a planetary with 2 DT's and like 3 zealots doesn't make sense as the planetary will just kill them, so obivously the protoss player will never try to do that, which leads to less multitasking in the game. Planetary fortress hp increased to 2000. Base armored increased to 5 (was 1). Planetary fortress attack removed. A PF has 5 bunker spaces (increased to 8 by the space upgrade upgrade) scvs can load into a planetary fortress, they cannot repair the fortress while inside. Units within can use all their abilities, including heal, lockdown, snipe or nuke. I still think my idea solves the program more gracefully than an ability similiar to nexus purifier beam. The PF gives enough time against even a death ball to get its army over there, however against small army harasses can force the terran to put army inside of the PF (just like with a normal expansion). Even that is a trade-off, since if infantry are inside the PF, the scvs have nowhere to hide and are exposed. The terran has to experiement with various bunker placements and figure out what is the optimal defensive squad and bunker placement to defend an expo against a wide range of threats.
What does mech do with that planetary?
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For the planetary
Planetary has 100 energy max
Loses Auto Attack
Gains Ability:
+ Show Spoiler +
Ibiks Bombardment:
Planetary uses 50 energy to bombard a targeted area for 7 rounds, 1 round per second. All units in that area take [30?] splash damage per shot.
Since the objective is to make the planetary easier to harass, but more anti deathball, I think an ability that is expensive to use but brings greater returns the more the opponent clumps up is the way to go about it simply. The expense = dont use it for small stuff, wait until you can use it on a big ball.
Just a small suggestion for 1 of the issues present.
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On March 10 2013 06:44 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 06:15 Chronopolis wrote:On March 10 2013 03:18 Hider wrote:
1. You have to place (some of) your supply depots with caution.
2. You get the time you need to bring back your army to defend small harass.
3. Larger groups of units should be able to deal with the PF before your army is there, unless you have extra defences.
4. Your opponent can now fake harass and bate you to waste minerals.
Is this not what you kinda had in mind anyway?
No I actually had the opposite in mind Currently planetaries are very good vs small group armies and medium sized armies, but useless vs deathballs. My suggestion wil it revert it so that it is good against medium sized units, awfull against small group units and very good against deathballs. Like lets say it currently takes 6 seconds for a deathball to kill a planetary. That is not enough time for the terrans army to reposition him self to defend the planetary. My suggestion will double the amount of time from 6 to 12 seconds, which will result in deathballs being a lot weaker. On the other hand I belivee there is no such thing as "winning time vs small armies". Like what can a small army actually to do a planetary? It can't kill the command center it self and rihgtly so, instead it should be able to do damage by A) Killing workers or B) Forcing the terran player to spend 75 energy on the planetary ability (which he really doesn't want to do). Either way the toss's harass will be succesful. In Starbow/WOL/HOTS harassing a planetary with 2 DT's and like 3 zealots doesn't make sense as the planetary will just kill them, so obivously the protoss player will never try to do that, which leads to less multitasking in the game. Planetary fortress hp increased to 2000. Base armored increased to 5 (was 1). Planetary fortress attack removed. A PF has 5 bunker spaces (increased to 8 by the space upgrade upgrade) scvs can load into a planetary fortress, they cannot repair the fortress while inside. Units within can use all their abilities, including heal, lockdown, snipe or nuke. I still think my idea solves the program more gracefully than an ability similiar to nexus purifier beam. The PF gives enough time against even a death ball to get its army over there, however against small army harasses can force the terran to put army inside of the PF (just like with a normal expansion). Even that is a trade-off, since if infantry are inside the PF, the scvs have nowhere to hide and are exposed. The terran has to experiement with various bunker placements and figure out what is the optimal defensive squad and bunker placement to defend an expo against a wide range of threats. What does mech do with that planetary?
They save 8 scvs and have enough TIME to come back and save the damn base. You can simcity, place 2 tanks and 1 medic there, or dump your gas into ghosts, put them in the pf and snipe/lockdown while your mech is getting it's ass over there. This is if you don't have infantry upgrades.
Bio, because its mobile, doesn't benefit as much from the extra time to get back in position, so I think its OK to give them the direct benefit.
Right now in starbow, the cheapest way to effectively way to defend an expansion is, 1 bunker, 2 tanks, 2 medics + simcity + PF. It's not so much different with the change (and eventual matrix change to flat damage prevention, which should happen)
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There are some alternative good versions for the PF. So something will happen. Much depend on what type of animations turn out to look good. I will look closer at it when HoTS is out, since I assume they will add many new features and new content in the editor.
I will keep many of the other suggestions you have presented in mind, like faster transformation between Viking, Banshee with small AoE etc. Especially ideas that strengthen the gameplay I want to achieve am I extra interested in!
Warp gate / gateway
I would like to encourage "gateway manangement" for Protoss. An extra dimension of macro. Shift between the two modes, back and forth during the game for various reasons. I am not sure how to achieve that. Probably the gateway must have some advantage, while the warp gate have another advantage.
The current 10 second slower build time for Warp gates is ok. But not perfect. In late game that does not matter since P can get "unlimited" amounts of warp gates. Plus that it punishes mid game harassment and instead promotes P to "turtle" up armies in his main base. This is atleast what Protoss players have told me for a while now.
Ideas how to make the Gateway/Warpgate dynamic more interesting?
Battlecruiser
So.. What shall we do with this monster? It is rarely built, is often not worth to go BCs until super late game.. they work well in huge numbers but suck when only 1-3.. I imagine that something more exciting and interesting can be done with this unit...
Brood lord
Right now it has a "normal" projectile as attack. When it hits an enemy unit, a buff is added to it that lasts 15 seconds. Many buffs can be on the same unit. When the unit dies, 1 broodling is spawned from it for each buff it had upon it's death.
Thoughts about this? Too annoying? Can it be improved? Remove broodlings altogether?
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The current 10 second slower build time for Warp gates is ok. But not perfect. In late game that does not matter since P can get "unlimited" amounts of warp gates. Plus that it punishes mid game harassment and instead promotes P to "turtle" up armies in his main base. This is atleast what Protoss players have told me for a while now.
I cant agree on that. I do think that Warpgate aspect is already working well. Also, i do think that in lategame warpgates should be better than gateways. If players are turtling, thats their choice. Its much better to use warpgates offensively. You should instead just give terrans good ways to stop toss from mass expanding and getting huge economy leading to insane amounts of banked resources. Terran still have (should have) much more cost efficient army in direct battle lategame.
There is really no need to add something gimmicky. Just give terrans viable options to harass, as right now its not even worth to try most of the time.
Battlecruiser
So.. What shall we do with this monster? It is rarely built, is often not worth to go BCs until super late game.. they work well in huge numbers but suck when only 1-3.. I imagine that something more exciting and interesting can be done with this unit...
I dont even know what stats do they have right now, but last time i checked they were quite op. Maybe give them sc2 ultralisks "frenzy" so they cant be frozen, controled, slowed, etc, so they are another viable way to snipe arbiters (via yamato) etc.
Brood lord
Right now it has a "normal" projectile as attack. When it hits an enemy unit, a buff is added to it that lasts 15 seconds. Many buffs can be on the same unit. When the unit dies, 1 broodling is spawned from it for each buff it had upon it's death.
Thoughts about this? Too annoying? Can it be improved?
They are strong. And they work quite fine imho. They are more useful in small numbers than sc2 ones, and not so op in high numbers i think.
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On BC. So the current battle cruiser isn't broken or anything, but personally I think anyone who has played air vs air in TvT finds the unit quite boring. Basically the reason why I prefer not to build the unit is because it suffers from the "easy to learn - easy to master" flaw. Yamato cannon is (especially with smart cast) very easy to learn and there is no other way you can micro the unit. Basically its a big A-move unit combined with a couple of Y-clicks.
Please be aware that my problem with the BC isn't that its a deathball unit. As previously stated I don't mind tier 3 units being deathball units as long as they don't come into play in the midgame. I like games where there have been 25-30 minute of action all over the place and if the game then finishes with one big microintensive battle, that is just awesome.
So my idea for the BC is based upon me trying to find a way to reward players with great micro. In WOL the correlation between effective APM and skill is too low. The below suggested yamato cannon will probably have the highest correlation between effective APM and skill of any ability currently in the game
This was actually an idea I suggested in the Onegoal thread a couple of months ago. I expect that the target group for Onegoal is slightly different from the target group of Starbow, as players there seemed slightly less interested in making the game harder to play from a mechanically perspective, which meant that it wasn't received well.
But some times I still dream at night, wondering how awesome this could have turned out, and I think it could probably fit well with Starbow as well.
How my suggested redesign of the yamato cannon will work
- Yamato cannon is no longer a one-time attack. Rather yamato cannon is something you have to activate.
- When yamato cannon is activated the terran player has 1 second to target on as many of the opposing players units as he is capable of, as long as the units are withint a range of 10 of the BC.
- For each unit the terran player has clicked on, a cannon attack will be fired
- After the 1 second has passed, it will take another 1 second for the BC to fire the cannon(s).
- Each cannon will deal 100 damage to each target (ignores hardened shield). Meanwhile the targetted units will have a red circle around them, so observers and the opposing player easily can see which units are targetted.
- You can only target each unit one time.
The exact stats are obviously debatable, and can be changed to accodomate the balance of the game.
This ability is easy to learn
A bad player can just click on 1-2 units But very fast players are capable of dealing an insane amount of damage (maybe they can target 5-7 units).
However, this will not make the BC it self useless as a unit at lower levels due to two reasons;
1) The capital ship it self is still a pretty good a-moving unit.
2) The opponent will also be worse at remicro'ing against the yamato cannon.
The ability has such a high skill cap that it can never be mastered
You can still smartcast this unit, but smartcasting is very inefficient, as activating all the BC's yamato cannons at once is a waste of energy as you can get the same outcome by just activating one single yamato cannon.
I also believe that great players will position their BC's in a certain way prior to a battle. They will have 1 BC in front and 1 a bit behind, which will optimize the use of yamato cannon. They will begin the battle by activating the yamato cannon of the first BC and 1 second later they will use the yamato cannon of the second BC.
The best korean players will in the world will be able to fire 6-8 yamato cannons during an attack which is extremely visually apealling to anyone watching the game. Players and spectators can immediately compare that to how they them selves uses the ability, which I believe will make them motivated to be better at it them selves.
How the opponent should be able to remicro against it
For the yamato cannon to miss its target, the target has to get a certain amount of yards away or simply be removed from the battlefield. The required distance can only be accomplished by rifting units home, blinking them away or picking them up with a dropship.
I believe this will create a lot of excitement as spectators, as the outcome of the battle depends on the players micro rather than the amount of units the player has.
Will this not result in the BC having too big an impact on thegame?
I think it is important to remember that the BC is easier to remicro against when you have relatively few units, which means that it typically will be used during larger battles. And in larger battles the difference between dealing 200 and 700 damage isn't that signifcant. The difference will likely result in a well microed BC being able to turn the game the favor of the terran player by 55% and if the opponent remicro's very well against the yamato cannon(s) he will able to gain a 55% lead.
Won't this confuse new players?
It probably isn't something you can just explain in one sentence, however, it is important to remember that the BC isn't a neccesity unit or a core-unit. On the other hand its more of a "if your in the late game, have the ressources and the APM, then you build it"-unit.
So it doesn't need to be simple to understand, as new players aren't going to be building it in the first couple of games they play in Starbow.
Rather I believe tier 3 capital ships needs to have something visually awesome about them, and watching 7 yamato cannons being fired would also work very well in a promotional video I think.
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Well, it sounds interesting and I agree with your intentions with the ability - easy to learn, much room for skill.
But here are my concerns:
I generally aim to make abilities/spells be:
- Click, cast, effect resolves, done.
Your yamato cannon is:
- Click, cast cast cast cast cast cast cast, all effect resolves, done. Click on next BC. Repeat. Click on the next BC etc.
Even though the time window is very short, I imagine that in a fight with many BCs involved, that would be all the Terran player would need/have time to do. Select 1 BC, spam, select next BC, spam etc.
The problem with this is that combat in Starbow is often very short. 5-25 seconds. During this time I want to encourage players to use many units, maneuver their army, micro, use different abilities. Stuff that adds depth to combat!
Thats why spells/abilities shall be quick to use so the player can select another type of unit and interact with.
I imagine that your yamato would be so dominant in combat, due to the mechanics it requires, that it would easily be the only micro Terran needs or will be able to do. Plus that it sounds very messy.
Now keep in mind, you have a vision for this ability in your head. You write it down as text. I read it and interpret and visualize it in my mind. Then I write my reply with my view of it, you interpret what I write and it might not correspond with the way you imagine the ability. Thats the danger of concepts in text. Probably is this something I need to see in the game to truly understand it.
Maybe the idea can become a bit more simplified and elegant?
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On March 10 2013 21:33 Kabel wrote:
Well, it sounds interesting and I agree with your intentions with the ability - easy to learn, much room for skill.
But here are my concerns:
I generally aim to make abilities/spells be:
- Click, cast, effect resolves, done.
Your yamato cannon is:
- Click, cast cast cast cast cast cast cast, all effect resolves, done. Click on next BC. Repeat. Click on the next BC etc.
Even though the time window is very short, I imagine that in a fight with many BCs involved, that would be all the Terran player would need/have time to do. Select 1 BC, spam, select next BC, spam etc.
The problem with this is that combat in Starbow is often very short. 5-25 seconds. During this time I want to encourage players to use many units, maneuver their army, micro, use different abilities. Stuff that adds depth to combat!
Thats why spells/abilities shall be quick to use so the player can jump to the next unit.
I imagine that your yamato would be so dominant in combat, due to the mechanics it requires, that it would easily be the only micro Terran needs or will be able to do. Plus that it sounds very messy.
Now keep in mind, you have a vision for this ability in your head. You write it down as text. I read it and interpret and visualize it in my mind. Then I write my reply with my view of it, you interpret what I write and it might not correspond with the way you imagine the ability. Thats the danger of concepts in text. Probably is this something I need to see in the game to truly understand it.
Maybe the idea can become a bit more simplified and elegant?
One thing I forgot to add in my initial post is how this differentiates it self from for example infested marines.
With infested marines you can basically close your eyes, abuse smartcast and there is nothing that seperates a low master player from a korean GM.
- With my suggestion the difference is clearly recognizeable.
- Also it doesn't just reward spamming, but rewards mouse precision, as some units are more important to target than other.
- Secondly a creates a certain dynamic/certian tension when the ability is activated. Like you can imagine every spectator will be like, what's goanna happen now??? Infested terrans creates 0 tension.
So you bring up a point, that I think is very important. Because as I see it you imagine that one of two things will happen;
1) Either the yamato cannon will be really good and people will prioritize using that one over everything else.
2) Or the Yamato cannon isn't good enough and people won't use it at all.
Because fundementally I agree with you that eveyrthing shouldn't just be about the BC. I think an ideal outcome would be a terran player using like 15 actions on the Bc, 40 actions micro'ing other units, and they should always feel like they could have benefitted from another from having twice the APM in that battle.
To obtain that outcome it is important that we introduce decreasing utility for each yamato cannon casted. So let's say you are a terran player controlling a vulture/goliath/tank/bc/SV army. Your opponent attacks and you consider your options;
- Should I micro my vultures
- Should I cast irradiate or EMP with my SV's?
- Should I focus fire with tanks?
- Should I use yamato cannon?
- Should I reposition my goliaths
So how will the terran player prioritize his actions?
- I think it is unlikely that the first action he will perform will be yamato cannon as the opponent could just be threating the attack and then retreat --> Big loss for the terran player. Likely he will first choose irradiate/EMP or to micro vulutures.
- Then he will choose yamato cannon. But he won't just target fire random units. Some units suffers more from taking damage from the cannon that others (at least that's the way it should be designed, if thats not the case with my suggested yamato cannon then a small tweak is needed).
- After he has landed maybe 5 yamato cannons on 5 well thought out units is is time to consider his 3rd move. Should be use yamato cannon with his second BC now? Likely he won't, and here is why; The Battle Cruiser will suffer from the law of diminishing marginal utlity as he already has attacked the most important units with his first yamato cannons. This means that at this point in the battle he will/should be better off micro'ing other units.
- Then in a later stage of the battle he will probably consider micro'ing his BC once again as he has already casted the amount of spider mines, used all avaiable energy on the SV or positioned his Goliaths optimally.
I admit that it can be challenging to get this ability correct, but I think it can be done and in that sitation it will result in awesome gameplay, and as you seem willing to make huge changes at the moment I believed this was the right time for me to suggest this one.
The important thing though is that we make that each yamato cannon casted has less utility than the one casted before that. This was originally designed for Onegoal where target firing immortals (hardened shield) have a higher priority than targetting other units, but I think with a few tweaks it could work for Starbow as well.
Secondly remember that even in the worst case scenario where you have maybe 4 BC's and prioritize yamato cannon over everything else, that will only take up 4 seconds of actions from the terran player. If the battle lasts 10 seconds more, then there is definitely room for further actions.
And it will never be efficient to mass BC's for two reasons (which means that smart players won't have more than 4 BC's at any point in the game .
1) High supply cost.
2) Each BC will always suffer from diminshing marginal utility ( please note here I talk about diminshing marginal utlity in the proces of you deciding what to build. Above I talked about diminshing marginal utility in the context of what you shuold micro first during the battle).
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But Kabel, even if this exact idea (with those stats) might not work out 100%, do you agree with me that we should try to to design units which have a very high correlation between effective APM and skill?
And do you agree with me that the BC can be deathballl'ish as long as it is very microintensive?
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You made a good comparision to Infested Terran, but with a target. And I do think your Yamato idea seems too spammy and messy. Thats why I have removed Infested Terran. Thats why Snipe is not a spammable ability anymore. (Atleast not spammable from the same unit.)
I think it is more important that APM is a process that matters all over the game. (Multitasking, macro, unit control, execute spells/abiliteis etc) A good player with great APM and good mouse precision can use many units/spells/abilities in a combat and gain the benefit from all of them. So I do not think that creating individual spells/abilities that requires a shit load of APM to execute is the only way to go.
Now don't get me wrong, APM and skill* are important factors for any ability or unit - easy to learn and use so even newcomers can enjoy it, but hard to master! BUT some abilities can still require high skills while not require high APM. And vice versa. Skill and APM most not always mean the same thing, so to say.
*which can mean a lot of things
I just think it is more fun to watch a game where a player with high APM uses 10 different "easy" spells/abilities in combat, compared to a player that uses his APM to Snipe the entire army with click click click click click.
Deathballs will always be an aspect of the game. Every army in the world wanna stick together! As some of you have mentioned already, the problem is when deathball always is the best way to go. (Aka always keep the whole army as clumped up as possible.)
So BCs and some other units will surely often be deathballs, unless they are heavily redesigned. I guess I just have to stick with some Starcraft traditions. But I am not convinced that it is fun to watch a large blob of tightly packed slow moving BCs, no matter if it requires loads of micro to execute their ability. (Especially if they can remain in a deathball and use their ability from that position)
Compare it to tightly packed mutalisks, which I think are fun for two reasons:
1. They are fast moving and can interact with a lot of stuff inside an enemy base. High APM in that regard is a roller coaster!
2. There is a huge risk to keep them in that formation. All of a sudden they can be Irradiated, Stormed etc which punishes the Zerg.
The APM required for mutalisks are in many areas: Clump up/seperate the mutas, move the mutalisks, target fire what comes in the way. It is fast paced, but it is not spammable control. It will not help if the mutalisks click on 5-10 SCVs really fast. They are limited by their attack rate.
The APM required for a BC ability would be to spam on the right targets. There would be some decision and mouse precision involved, as you describe. I just think the ability can become more elegant.
So let me end with saying that it is good that you, and everyone, bring ideas. I have no recipe for the BC myself. I just share what I see as concerns with your suggestion.
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I can bring some other small topics for discussion:
Psi Storm
What can be done with this classical spell? Some want me to make it last longer but deal less damage. In this way low HP units like marines can still be viable vs Protoss. Others want it to remain brutal and short.
Corruptor
Right now it has an ability called "Corrupt." (My imagination is great ^^ ) It costs ca 150 energy and destroys target ground unit. (Remember that Corruptors need Greater spire.) The intention of the ability is to make the Corruptor gain a meaningful way to interact with ground units. (Which both the Viking and Corsair can do now.)
Can something better be done with the Corruptor?
Stasis Field
This was a hot topic a few weeks ago. Personally I like the prisoner situation it creates on the battlefield. Should I stay or should I go?
Maybe add a missile to it so it is dodgeable? (Good luck siege tanks ^^)
Rework it completely?
Thoughts?
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A good player with great APM can use many units/spells/abilities in a combat and gain the benefit from all of them. So I do not think that creating spells/abilities that require a shit load of APM to execute is the only way to go.
I don't understand how this is relevant in the context of my BC suggestion? I think I covered in my last post that players will be able to use various abilities/micro units while using the yamato cannon.
And I do think your Yamato idea seems too spammy and messy.
Compare this yamato cannon to how you would target units with siege tanks. Basically its exactly the same. However, the reason why focus fire with siege tanks isn't that entertaining to watch is because its hard to notice when players actually target fire with siege tanks. That is where my BC suggestion shine, because it is extremely visually appealing. Everyone can see when a good player uses the yamato cannon.
Secondly, matrix is a spam-ability as well. Many abilities currently in the game are what we could spam-abilities. But it really doesn't matter - The key is that they promote skill in an entertaining way.
However, my suggested yamato is even more visually appealing than matrix as spectators clearly can notice the difference between someone with 400 battle apm and someone with 150 battle apm. With matrix it will probably appear similarly.
I think it is more important that APM is a process that matters all over the game
I agree, however, I think APM in it self is quite irrelevant. Like for example I think no MBS isn't the correct way to promote APM, even though it matters all over the game. For me its about rewarding a specific kind of effective APM (micro + multiasking based).
But I agree that games shouldn't be decided by 1-second battles. and I think there are two ways to avoid that;
- Giving players lots of stuff they can do while not in battle (mines, siege positioning, small drops etc.) --> But I think that next patch will have a lot more of that, and I don't think capital ships needs more of this.
- Give players a lot of ways to express skills in the battle, but making punishment for subpar micro relatively small. In this way players need to make a lot of mistakes in order to go from a 50%vs50% to a 10%vs90% situation after just one battle.
I think my suggested yamato cannon will fit into the latter, as the potential damage output is relatively small in larger battles.
But I am not convinced that it is fun to watch a large blob of tightly packed slow moving BCs, no matter if it requires loads of micro to execute their ability. (Especially if they can remain in a deathball and use their ability from that position)
I think I covered in my previous post why there will always never be more than 3-4 BC's at the battle in the same time. Each BC you build will be a lot less valuable. This is unlike "A-move units" such as stalker/zealot/marines and or spamable smartcast abillities like infested terrans doesn't suffer from diminshing marginal utility.
Compare it to tightly packed mutalisks, which I think are fun for two reasons:
1. They are fast moving and can interact with a lot of stuff inside an enemy base. High APM in that regard is a roller coaster!
2. There is a huge risk to keep them in that formation. All of a sudden they can be Irradiated, Stormed etc which punishes the Zerg.
Well obviously this intended BC is not supposted to work in that way, and I don't think you can ever get tier 3 capital ships to work simialrly to mutalisks (or other harass based units). I think per definition tier 3 capital ships will be deathball units. The key is just to make them more skillbased and not make it possible to tech right up to them without going through a midgame stage.
With the correct stats I am very convinced that the yamato cannon will create an awesome tension, however my fear will be that it will decrease the amount of action in the game as it may make it too difficult too attack into the terran army (in the same way that it is difficult to attack into a protoss WOL army with HT's when you go bio). This could cause players to stare at each other armies.
But I think that is less of a problem when the terran player has siege tanks in his army as he always will be able to gain ground by slowly pushing his tank line, but the question remains whether a redesigned BC should be stronger defensively (as my suggestion imply) or work similarly to the current WOL yamato cannon (which basically is as good offensively as defensively).
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This was a hot topic a few weeks ago. Personally I like the prisoner situation it creates on the battlefield. Should I stay or should I go?
When you have 30 tanks, getting 5 tanks stasis'ed isn't a big deal. That was what often happened in BW: However, due to the improved AI, counterattack as protoss is now a lot easier which means that terran has to split them selves further, which again means that they will typicall have 15 tanks in a defensive position in Starbow rather than the 30 tanks they would have in a similar situation BW. That is a huge buff to stasis, and in that way Stasis actually promotes deathballs (by forcing players to have 30 tanks together rather than 15 tanks).
This is one of the situation where AOE abilities have unintended consequences.
So therefore stasis actually needs to be either A) Weaker, B) Redesigned.
If A is chosen then it might just result in it being useless.
So I strongly prefer option B. Simply put I dont think the current design of stasis can work with Starcraft 2 AI.
EDIT: Just played game vs DAnko. He went mass carrier + arbiter. Then he stasis'ed like 20 vikings with like 2 arbiters. THat stuff just reminds me of fungal growth way too much.
EDIT 2.0: Sorry it was just one stasis, and he also got 4 goliaths as well. I think a redesign of stasis can't be done fast enough.
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@ psi storm
I like the high templar. Slow, fragile, expensive and capable of balcketing the battlefield wiith storm. Storm should be really good, whether slow or fast. Unless I face to stargate play I almost always make a muta-tech switch in mid-game vs toss to snipe ht's and harass because there is no way to directly engade a protoss army if he has a great storm potential. I loved this aspect from BW as well. Don't change it (too much..)
@ Curropter
Please make it lair tech. Toss air is sooo good atm. Maybe zerg need to be better at using fungal/plauge vs air and not just pure hydra, but toss air is really scary atm in PvZ. If lair tech, then the "curroption" ability can't be that good ofc. Sorry, no brilliant ideas there. Still make it spawn from mutas so you can't just "spam" curroptors and strait up counter toss air as in SC2. You have to make the fragile mutas first.
@ BC
What is the purpose of this unit? In BW it was often used in TvT late-game to break tank-lines, and sometimes in very lategame ZvT (Firebathero Vs Savior anyone?). If I played TvT and the tank-lines were well-covered, I'd make mass banshee instead of BC. In BW that was ofc not possible, so maybe its role needs to be re-defined, and hence redesigned. What late-game tool do you terrans miss? It kinda overlaps with the Banshee too much atm.
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On March 11 2013 03:26 Xiphias wrote:
@ psi storm
I like the high templar. Slow, fragile, expensive and capable of balcketing the battlefield wiith storm. Storm should be really good, whether slow or fast. Unless I face to stargate play I almost always make a muta-tech switch in mid-game vs toss to snipe ht's and harass because there is no way to directly engade a protoss army if he has a great storm potential. I loved this aspect from BW as well. Don't change it (too much..)
@ Curropter
Please make it lair tech. Toss air is sooo good atm. Maybe zerg need to be better at using fungal/plauge vs air and not just pure hydra, but toss air is really scary atm in PvZ. If lair tech, then the "curroption" ability can't be that good ofc. Sorry, no brilliant ideas there. Still make it spawn from mutas so you can't just "spam" curroptors and strait up counter toss air as in SC2. You have to make the fragile mutas first.
@ BC
What is the purpose of this unit? In BW it was often used in TvT late-game to break tank-lines, and sometimes in very lategame ZvT (Firebathero Vs Savior anyone?). If I played TvT and the tank-lines were well-covered, I'd make mass banshee instead of BC. In BW that was ofc not possible, so maybe its role needs to be re-defined, and hence redesigned. What late-game tool do you terrans miss? It kinda overlaps with the Banshee too much atm.
I don't think the BC really has any purpose - terran pretty much has everthing covered. So I think we should just focus on the unit design it self (making the unit awsome to watch and play with), rather than thinking in terms of its role in the game.
Compared to banshees, BC's are more immobile, more tanky and has yamato cannon. I wouldn't mind though that these differences were strenghtend - like for example wouldn't it be awesome if you could kite hydras with banshees like you can kite unstimmed marines in WOL with banshees?
Is a range upgrade out of the question for the banshee? (personally I wouldn't mind trading cloack for range upgrade as I feel like cloack is kinda gimmicky).
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More macro-heavy map? I like it. Easy natural. Each base gets harder to hold, but still a lot of bases to make the SB mashine running. Lots of high-ground to abuse, and a very scary "dump" in the middle you do not wanna get cough in.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=402268
No Xel-naga
Also. I was reading through the beginning of this thread. There seemed to a lot of players that are not active anymore. Why did they quit? Was it SB or just not time to play games in general? That would be interesting to find out I think. It seems to me that most people trying out this MOD like it.
2nd also, Kabel. I know you are working on redesign but when it's done (or before). Please make this thread on battle.net.
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@Banshee
Range upgrade might be a good idea, since that allows more micro for the Terran player. Not sure I can remove cloak though. I am still limited by the Starcraft traditions. If players expect a unit to do something, then all of a sudden it can not do it anymore, that can throw people off.
@new map
It might be good. The only problem I see is that bases are very close to each other, like in all maps designed for SC2. Generally maps with spreat bases seems to be more enjoyable for Starbow
@old players
Well, the player base has been roughly as it is now, with some up and downs. Maybe 10 active players, 10-15 semi-active that are online sometimes. Players have come and gone. Some got angry over changes I made. Some got bored. Some just vanished without a word. Some people have just enjoyed to discuss here in the thread, but barely played. Others enjoy to watch vods.
The largest boom of players was in september I think. Starbow got published on a russian forum. For ca a week there were around 20 players daily in the channel. The record is 24 players in the channel ^^ But it faded away...
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Here are areas of the game I consider to change/improve/rework:
General stuff
- Spread out the economy even more over the map, to encourage players to control larger parts of the map. I will likely give the wagons a try since I am curious. If it turns out to suck it is easy to remove them again. Otherwise, I do not know how to achieve this.
- Encourage players even more to keep their army seperated and not clumped up. I aim to do this mainly via better AoE-effects and better options for harassment. Of course I will be careful and not overbuff spells left and right.
- Give players methods for earlier map presence. Sometimes players are afraid to go out on the map for the first 10 minutes. I wanna give the races just slightly more methods to be present on the map.
Zerg
- Rework Scourge. A bit tougher, larger model so it is easier to interact with, deals splash damage upon impact. Might also damage ground units UNDER an enemy air unit that it flies into. In this way I wanna add another reason for the enemy to NOT just clump up everything in a ball.
- Fungal + Plague can get some small buff. Maybe larger AoE. Just to promote the enemy to spread out even more.
- Drop upgrade for Overlords might become cheaper. This is just to promote even more harassment for Zerg.
- Nydus most likely moved to Hive tech. (It overlaps with Overlord drop upgrade at lair tech) Maybe even rework Nydus.
- Rework Corruptor and it's ability?
- Swarm Guardian with Dark Swarm, Frenzy and Consume? Maybe do something here?
- Baneling?
Protoss
- Add Nullifier. I have some potential spells to use. Will probably interact with clumped up enemy units.
- Make Rift cheaper to research or maybe even start with it. This is to promote earlier map presence for P, mainly vs Z.
- Tempest with an AoE-attack replace Carrier. The carrier is a true deathball unit. The Tempest, with AoE-attack will split enemy deathballs!
- Phase Missile for Scout larger AoE. This is to punish enemy players who clump up their casters with their army.
- Rework/remove Aerial Sensor ability for the Scout? It is very much like Scan now. Maybe give it Revelation?
- Warp gate rework?
- Rework Stasis field?
Terran
- Rework PF
- Rework BC/Yamato gun
- Rework Matrix
- Make Dropships lift sieged siege tanks. (Unsieged when on the ground again). Maybe cheaper Dropships. If they remain in the game at all...
- More stuff about Terran here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=232#4626
Other stuff:
- Some players want me to include more late game upgrades. If I find something that is truly useful and interesting, it might be added. So share ideas if you have
- Maybe HoTS features some new spells or models in the editor that would fit perfectly into Starbow that I have not thought about. I am limited by the content in the game.
- I have surely missed to write things on this list.
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I think most important change to terran of everything is to buff vulture harass (vs protoss). I think you shuld consider these two changes (both of them):
- Damage to light units increased from 18 to 20.
- Vulture cost changed from 100/0 to 75/25.
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If you introduce tempest (please don't) , it MUST be very different from the HoTS one. No sick range. A true Capital ship with decent dps. Preferably different attack from air to ground. The problem is, however. Toss has no need for more splash anti-air. Crossairs and scouts fill the anti-air for toss just fine. The Tempest should be good at anti-ground I guess... ah.... so hard to replace the carrier. Such a symbol of greatness....
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EPT
